Digital and Online Marketing Musings. Good, bad and ugly.

Category Archives: Facebook

Having been in the media industry for *cough* 20 years this year, the scales fell from my eyes a long time ago. I assumed that everyone approached media and advertising with the same slightly raised eyebrow as me, so when people who don’t work in media (and hence probably do real jobs) express righteous anger at Facebook redesigns, their dwindling sense of privacy or misguidedly share one of those annoying “I hereby do not give you right to do blah blah…..” notices I am genuinely surprised that some people really haven’t figured it out.

For the avoidance of doubt, Facebook is a commercial entity, as is Google, as is ITV.

They are not publicly funded like the BBC, therefore their sole reason for creating ANYTHING is to make you use it and watch it – so that they can sell advertising around it. In addition to that, they can get more money for their advertising if they know more about their audience (yes, that’s you).

To give an example – imagine that Disney are selling their new animated kids’ movie. They may be willing to pay a certain amount for their ad to be seen in front of a thousand people. If those people can be proven to be parents, then their perceived value of those eyeballs grows. This makes the newspaper/magazine/TV station/website publisher much happier, and gives them an incentive to find out as much about you as they can, to increase your value to their advertisers.

If there is even further information available about viewers/listeners/users, such as the age of their children, whether they’ve liked other Disney animated films and if they’ve visited one of the Disney Parks in the last 12 months – that value can further grow enormously as it’s a good indicator that they’re more likely to buy the advertiser’s product.

Here’s an example of how it works on Facebook:

Facebook audience targeting

For the basic UK adult targeting above, Facebook recommends a CPC (cost per click) bid of between 25p to 54p, How much of this you’ll have to pay will depend on how fast you want to spend your budget, and supply and demand at the time you go live.

Now see what happens if you add some extra criteria about family status:

Facebook audience targeting with children aged 4-12.

As you can see, the number of people in the target audience has dropped (to less than 10% of the original number), and the price you’ll have to pay to show them your ads has increased, by about 30%. If these people respond more frequently to the ads and therefore the advertiser sells more DVDs, then it’s evidently still worth their while to pay a bit more, so everyone’s still happy.

But how much do they really know about me?

Well traditionally “brand” advertising has been sold around content, so you’ll see different ads around America’s Next Top Model than you do around Wheeler Dealers. The assumption is that certain types of people (gender, age bracket, purchasing habits) trend towards certain content.

Direct advertising, and especially since the growth of the internet is more likely to be sold around what we know about the person themselves.

ACORN advert for regional classification for advertisers

The 80s saw the launch of ACORN (A Classification of Regional Neighbourhoods) in the States, which segmented all US areas into demographic types – which was used to help advertisers to accurately target their direct mail and later TV, and now online across most countries.

Clearly people living in areas classified as “02 – Affluent working families with mortgages” will be worth more to the advertiser than “48 – Low incomes, high unemployment, single parents”.

It has ever been thus and means that where they can, advertisers will use the most detailed criteria available to increase the response to, and decrease the wastage of their advertising activity.

Social media, and people’s increasing willingness to share personal data has led to an explosion in the levels of targeting that an advertiser can access. To continue the Disney/Facebook example:

Facebook targeting options, Disney films

There are so many targeting criteria that can be used to target the Facebook audience, and all these options make the audience more valuable to the advertiser (and to Facebook). Disney films, parks and characters can be added to the interest category, and these people set up as a segment so that they will see the ads that are most targeted to them.

If the advertiser wanted to target grandparents also – say in the run up to Xmas, they can add extra age criteria to make it more relevant and tweak the ads even further.There is a segment called “babyboomers” who can be lured with nostalgic references to childhood toys of their youth.

Spooky?

Those who see the level of detail advertisers can access for the first time often react with horror – OMG!! They’re going to sell me stuff!!

Well my answer to that is

a) did you really think you get anything for free, really? and

b) at least the stuff they’ll try to sell you is vaguely relevant.

I’d be very bored very quickly if all the ads I ever saw were for golf equipment and incontinence pads (neither of which I have a need for, incidentally).

If you feel worried about your privacy then there are always ways you can prevent advertisers from knowing more about you.

Firstly, don’t be hanging around on Facebook. It’s like carrying a sandwich board around with you telling them how to sell to you, and when. If you must do, then set your posts to automatically show to “friends” only (not public), and don’t like/share ridiculous images that *obviously* aren’t going to suddenly start moving if you write a comment

While you’re at it, tick the “opt out” box on every form you ever fill in

Delete your cookies after every online session

Go and live in the desert, although you may just end up re-classified as “Self sufficient, rejecter of society, interested in green issues”.

Frankly, it’s a part of the world we live in, and whether you engage with it or not is your choice. You will see ads around every media you interact with, but you only make the advertiser’s job easier if you volunteer information to them. Choose wisely and carefully what you share with the public and commercial entities, and remember: